Revision as of 11:57, 27 June 2009

covers for issues 13-16

Dilettantes & heartless manipulators is a free weekly perzine made by an anonymous zinester from Melbourne, Victoria, Australia. The first issue was made on 9 March 2009, and launched in Adelaide, South Australia, Australia a few days later as a part of the Format Festival zine launch/local history walking tour. It has been produced every successive week since, with the exception of issues 5 & 6, which were both created on the same day, though released a week apart in chronological order. The first four issues had relatively high circulation, with 120-150 copies being released each week in Melbourne, various parts of New South Wales (also in Australia), and Chicago. From issues 5-8, circulation went down to 50, edging up again to 60 on issue 9.

The issues are largely anecdotal, and range from 1000-1300 words in length. The back page of each issue contains a reference to the music listened to by the author whilst writing the issue in question, followed by the phrase "This is not a review". Further description can be found on this extract from the initial ad put up on the Zine Classifieds web-site:

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"This is a weekly A7 zine, produced every Monday (since 9 March, 2009) and distributed the following weekend.

It is an anti-review. Every issue, I listen to a different record/tape/CD and write about whatever the hell else is going through my head. The music/words/whatever could suck me in and take up all my thoughts, or it could not feature at all. Context is everything, and reductionist, vacuum-y reviews all too often stifle the fluid love of music and give music nerds a bad name.

If you live in Melbourne (or can get there easily or know someone from there who does errands for you), you can pick up new issues every Saturday at either Missing Link or the Sticky Institute.

If you live in Australia & mail me a book of 55c stamps, I’ll send you as many issues. Contact me thru:

spurzine at gmail dot com

…to get my snail mail and start the madness.

If overseas, e-mail me and we’ll sort out."

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Further to this, from issue 4 onwards, a snail-mail address has been added to the contacts section on the back cover: